2012 Best Church Service One 0401: full transcript and answers

▶ 0:00 And today we’re going to be looking in 1 Corinthians 14, a New Testament church service. I know today we have all kinds of ideas how a church service is supposed to be, even how long it should be. But Paul is going to give us clear instructions on how a New Testament church service should be. Are you ready? Remember 1 Corinthians 12, 1 Corinthians 13, and 1 Corinthians 14, the chapter we’re in: three very important chapters. If you want to have a powerful church, a powerful church service, you must understand these three chapters, and not only understand them, you must exercise them. We got to get away from this mentality that everybody can pick and choose how a church service goes and what must, should be done in the church service. Paul is going to explain it very clearly.

▶ 1:12 Remember in 1 Corinthians 12:1 he says, “Concerning spiritual, I would not have you ignorant.” Now the King James and the other ones have “spiritual gifts,” but the word “gift” isn’t in that at all. It could be they just added it for clarification. It could be, “I don’t want you ignorant of spiritual things. I don’t want you ignorant of spiritual manifestations, spiritual expressions.” You see, coming to Christ we come into a spiritual kingdom. We’re already in a human kingdom, but what we need is a spiritual understanding and a spiritual touch in our life. And so there are four goals when we come to church. There should be four goals, four purposes.

▶ 2:07 Number one, we should be coming with the understanding of how spiritual things work, not to be ignorant anymore of spiritual things. How many can raise your hand and say, “Lord, I don’t want to be ignorant anymore of spiritual things”? You know, it’s not a matter of what man says this and man says that; it’s what God says: spiritual to spiritual. And so we need understanding of spiritual things. Number two, in chapter 12:31 Paul said you got to covet. See, the Ten Commandments says, “Thou shalt not covet,” but here you’re allowed to covet. You’re allowed to covet spiritual gifts, and in fact he says the best gifts. And it says covet earnestly, or seriously. We need to take spiritual things seriously. Could that be an amen? Yeah. We got to get away from the concert mentality that’s in the America today. We got to get away from all these programs and everything, and we got to focus in on what the Bible tells us to focus in, and that is spiritual things, and we got to get serious about it. And “best gifts” means the higher gifts. There are levels of gifts, and he says you need to get serious about the higher level of gifts. Gifts is a spiritual ability, okay, a supernatural spiritual ability.

▶ 3:40 Now, four goals; there’s two of them. 1 Corinthians 12:31, “I will show you a more excellent way.” 1 Corinthians 14:1, “Follow after charity.” And then chapter 13 was all about love, right? See, I’m going to show you a superior way to spiritual manifestations, and then he goes into chapter 13 and explains love in great detail. See, and he says if you want spiritual manifestation, you’ve got to have what? Love. You got to pursue love. And so we got to have a goal to love, you see. And it explains love: love is patient, love is kind, love doesn’t brag about itself, love doesn’t rejoice in iniquity but rejoices in the truth. In other words, love doesn’t sin. Love bears all things, believes all things, and endures all things. Love never quits. Now let me ask you this: how do I know if I’m loving? Okay, if I go out on my wife and have sex outside of my marriage, who am I not loving?

▶ 4:56 I’m not loving my wife, because, see, love does nothing to hurt. So see, that eliminates me from spiritual expressions. Who else am I not loving? My children. I’m a bad example to my children. So that eliminates me from spiritual expressions. Paul says you can’t get into the power of the Spirit but through love. Do we get that? Who else am I not loving? I’m not loving God, because God says, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” See, that’s three strikes. Now if I go and steal, who am I not loving? Well, obviously the person that I stole from; I hurt them. Obviously I’m going to hurt my family, because if I wind up in jail and I’m not there to be a father and be a provider, that hurts the family. And obviously I’m not loving God, because God says, “Thou shalt not steal.” And see, the church wants power, of spiritual expressions, but they don’t want to go through love. Oh, they love to get, I mean, worship, when I was a young believer, was rare. You know, it was the church across the railroad tracks, it was the weirdos that did that. Now everybody’s worshiping, but not everybody’s loving. There’s something wrong.

▶ 6:36 We’re into the music, we’re into all that, but we’re not into love. Are you with me? And so, see, we need to have this goal to what? Pursue love. And in pursuing love, then the peripheral thing given to us would be spiritual manifestations. Now Paul’s clear. You agree with Paul? Yes. So see, somewhere we got to get serious about a church service. Could that be an amen? And we got to come with a serious mentality about church.

▶ 7:23 Now the fourth goal we should have: 1 Corinthians 14:1, “Desire spiritual gifts, but rather that you may prophesy.” Now here is the best gift: prophecy. Prophecy means speaking by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, not your spirit, not your little hobby-horse doctrine, not your Calvinist, Lutheran, or Catholic or whatever doctrine. It’s speaking by the inspiration; the source comes from the Spirit. See, the Spirit is the source of this thing. Are you with me? It can’t be you; it’s got to be the Spirit that initiates it. And so those are four goals we got to come to church for if we want to see God moving. These four goals are necessary.

▶ 8:25 Now the utterance gifts. He’s going to be talking about the utterance spiritual abilities that God wants to manifest in a church service, and I’m just going to go through, instead of verse by verse, I’m just going to give you the outline of what he’s saying here. Word of wisdom, remember that in 1 Corinthians 12; the word of knowledge; prophecy; interpretation; revelation; doctrine; unknown languages; singing; praying; and Psalms. See, these are the utterance expressions that God is saying is the best spiritual manifestation in the church service.

▶ 9:25 Now some of these we all can’t do, but some of them we can. Can we all sing? Yeah. Can we all pray? Yes. Could we all read a Psalm? Psalms are Scriptures; they’re spiritually anointed Scripture. Yeah. And we can all prophesy, one by one. Paul says when that certain presence of prophecies is there. But he also said not all prophesy, not all speak in tongues, not all interpret, and so forth, but there is things that we can do. All right, and so here it is. These are the utterance gifts. The Spirit comes and moves us to speak things, and Paul says these are the best gifts. No mention of healing, no mention of miracles, no mention of discerning of spirits, no mention of faith. The utterance gifts, Paul is saying, is the high gifts. Are you with Paul? Hallelujah.

▶ 10:42 Now here is the requirements. If you want to say something, these are your guidelines. See, judge it first before you open your mouth. Judge it by these four things. Are you ready? Number one, it’s got to edify, exhort, and comfort. See, it’s got to build up, it’s got to construct people’s lives, it’s got to encourage them. See, or it’s going to comfort them. See, when someone is down, they need comforted. And above all, it’s got to be easily understandable. I can lift up my voice and say, “There was an old oak tree, and as the wringing of the nose bringeth forth blood.” So, I mean, there’s not much understanding there, is there? But yet both of those were Scriptures. So you can’t just use Scripture without it making sense. Hallelujah. So you judge it of what am I going to say. Is it going to profit people’s life, and are they going to understand it? If not, zip the lip. Could that be an amen?

▶ 12:14 Secondly, 1 Corinthians 14:15, the Holy Spirit must be the source. “I will sing with the spirit, I will sing with the understanding; I will pray with the spirit, I will pray with the understanding.” Acts 2:4, they spoke in languages as the Spirit gave them utterance. Who gave the speech? Who gave the utterance? The Spirit. They didn’t do it on their own. So see, the Spirit has to be the source, not my mentality. I know something and know so-and-so should be changing their life, and so I speak a word: “Man, you’re a sinner and you’re going to hell, you got to repent today.” Yeah. Now the Spirit ignites it, and you obviously don’t know anything, but the Spirit does, and the Spirit knows how to say it. We want to beat each other over the head, we want to correct each other, and the Spirit wants to change and encourage and build lives. Hallelujah.

▶ 13:25 Now this, to me as a young believer, made the Spirit-filled churches quite a few notches above the other ones that did not believe in the baptism of the Holy Ghost with expressions. So I could walk into a Spirit-filled church, 90% of the time you could feel the power of His presence. It was there. Why? Because they purposed, they had a purpose. Did they do everything right? No, they didn’t. They made a lot of boo-boos, but they had some right goals. But Paul’s given us the total goals, and he’s going to clear everything up for us. 1 Corinthians 14:40, “Let all things be done decently, mannerly, and in order.” This is the problem that we had in old Pentecost and in the charismatic circles: there was no manners and there was no order, and so it turned a lot of people off. But I’m telling you, we can’t stop seeking and responding to the Word of God because some people mess it up. Could that be an amen?

▶ 14:43 We can’t go to our own mentality and have a church service where we’re so mannerly that God can’t even get, you know, we get rid of Him. We’re so worried about offending people, we don’t care if we offend God, and it’s His house. Hallelujah. And this is the mistakes we make, and I had to work through all this as a young Christian. I was baffled for a year or two with some of this stuff until God began to give me understanding. All right. 1 Corinthians 14:27 through [unclear]: prophecies and tongues should be spoken two, or at the most, three. It’s not [unclear]. Hallelujah, bam. See, just one. I used to call them tongue tournaments, you know, [unclear], you know, just [unclear]. And prophecy, you can’t just keep prophesying after the third one. What do you do? Stop. And it says “in course.” What’s that mean? See, a part, and it’s a part added to a part. If someone prophesies about having a heart after God, and the next person prophesies about Judas betraying Christ, see, it’s not adding to the part. It’s got to build. See, build, and in three expressions you should have the clarity of the whole thing. Amen.

▶ 16:48 And watch this: tongues is the same way. He says the person speaks in an unknown tongue, let it be one or two, at the most three. And people are scared to death of tongues and languages today because us Pentecostals, charismatic, Spirit-filled churches have made a mess of this thing, and so people just want to throw it out of the Bible. And Paul plainly says that tongues should be spoken the same way, and there should be an interpretation. Isn’t that right? Hallelujah.

▶ 17:29 That is the requirements. I want to take a closer look at tongues here. I want to convince you today that tongues are Bible, and they are for today, from Paul’s teaching, the chiefest apostle’s teaching. This is not my teaching; I’m just his microphone. It says in 1 Corinthians 14, when we speak in an unknown tongue, we speak to God, not to man. Now what’s wrong with us speaking to God? Is there anything wrong with me speaking to God? When I pray, am I supposed to be praying to men or to God? To God. So what’s wrong with talking to God? Nothing. It’s important.

▶ 18:22 Secondly, he edifies himself; he builds up himself. What’s wrong with me building up myself in the faith? Is there anything wrong with that? No, it’s not only not wrong, I should be encouraged to do it. I need to not wait for the J.B. [unclear], the mighty man of God, to do something for me. I should be, what? Building myself up. Are you with me? Now Paul’s good. I’m telling you, this apostle Paul’s good. Tongues are a sign to the unbeliever. What’s wrong with that? If tongues will get the unbeliever’s attention, is that a good thing? Yes. See, miracles also get the unbeliever’s attention. See, those are good things.

▶ 19:22 But if there’s no interpretation, there should be an interpretation. If there’s no interpretation, the guy speaks mysteries, and it is no profit to others. Okay, so I shouldn’t be doing it publicly in the service, but I can be doing it quietly myself during worship, can’t I? [unclear], you know, I’m not bothering anybody. I’m building myself up, I’m talking to God. But when I leave decently and in order, I told [unclear] the people go, “Well, what’s going on?” Paul says they’re going to say you are what? Mad. You’re crazy. People, and that’s exactly what they said about us Pentecostals: they’re a bunch of nuts. Why? Because we didn’t do it mannerly and in proper order. “Well, the Spirit’s upon me.” Oh, shut up. Paul said that the spirit of the prophet is in control. You can control yourself and not say anything and just feel good. Amen.

▶ 20:45 Hallelujah. Then Paul says, “Forbid not to speak in tongues.” Boy, you go to most churches, it’s taboo. In fact, they have said it’s not for today. They’ve rewritten the whole Bible. “Well, it’s just not for today.” Well, isn’t that nice. What else is not for today? A sign for the unbeliever, and it’s not for today. I can edify myself, and it’s not for today. I can talk to God, and it’s not for today. No, thank you. I want these things. And the Holy Spirit, again, must give the utterance. It can’t be you showing off with your [unclear], it can’t be you, you know, doing your little thing. The Holy Spirit’s got to move. There will be an interpretation if the Holy Spirit is moving in an unknown language to edify the body of Christ, to comfort it. There will be an interpretation, and if there isn’t, what does Paul say? Keep silent. But he still says what? Don’t forbid to speak in tongues. And so I submit to you today, tongues are important when it’s done right. As a young believer it touched my life, that power of the presence just touched my life. I might have not have known what was said, but the Holy Ghost was backing it up.